But in many areas, electricity currently comes from fossil sources: coal, oil, natural gas. That has led to worries that widespread adoption of electric vehicles and heat pumps could actually result in increased carbon emissions.
A comprehensive analysis of 59 different regions of the world provides some reassurance: “Already under current carbon intensities of electricity generation, electric cars and heat pumps are less emission intensive than fossil-fuel-based alternatives in 53 world regions, representing 95% of the global transport and heating demand,” an international team of researchers reported yesterday in Nature Sustainability.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers performed a life-cycle analysis: they calculated the carbon emissions associated with manufacturing, using, and disposing of both gasoline cars and electric vehicles. They did the same thing for fossil fuel-based heating systems and electric heat pumps.
It's Time to Decarbonize cars, heat and electricity creationhttps://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2020/03/the-time-to-electrify-everything-is-now/